Litle Girl Lost
by heatherpoulette
Summary: Clare takes a good look at herself after Nowhere to Run and finally realizes she does not like what she sees


**Disclaimer: I don't own Degrassi. If I did, Clare would not be behaving as she is.**

She gazed long and hard into the mirror, unsure of who she was seeing looking back at her. The girl in the mirror looked liked her - same curly hair now a little longer, same blue eyes, same nose and mouth - but there was most definitely something different that she had not recognized before. Was it the slight downturn to the lips? The sadness behind the eyes? The hardness to her overall expression?

She threw the mirror across the room, no longer able to look at herself, and laid down on the bed, sighing deeply. She no longer felt like herself, hadn't in fact for a long time. She felt empty, a shell of her former self. She knew she was hurting others. She knew she was only thinking about the now, about her own wants and needs, rather than anyone else's, including family, friends and significant others in her life. She cared that was she behaving so badly, deep down inside she truly did, but on the surface it appeared as she did not. On the surface it appeared to the world that the once caring, selfless girl known as Clare Edwards had turned into a selfish, self-centered, shallow creature that few could really stand to be around. And for now, she did not know how to move this caring that she had buried so deeply within her core to the surface to revitalize the person she was meant to be.

She tried to think when the change had begun; perhaps if she could pinpoint it, she could figure out how to reverse it or at best learn and grow from it and be happy with herself once again. She remembered back to when she began at Degrassi and shook her head at the images of her younger self which began to form in her head. Insisting on wearing her parochial school uniform to public school despite her older sister's protests ("I'm here to learn, not to worry about how I look. Besides, I'm comfortable") and continuing to wear it even though she knew it set her aside from the other Grade 9 students she met. Her hair scraped back tightly in a pony tail, glasses on at all times, concerned about school work and always doing the right thing in regards to her fellow students, her parents, her church. She knew she was often judgmental at times (she remembered the way she asked KC if he was in the wrong class because he certainly did not look like he belonged in the Gifted program with his skater clothes and beanie) but she also remembered a girl who stuck to her principles and defended those who could not seem to defend themselves. Being called a "little bitch" by the principal of Degrassi was not one of her favorite moments, but being part of a group who was able to expose how terribly he treated students who did not fit into his ideal athletic mainstream was.

Had things changed inside her when Darcy left her and never turned back? She had never been terribly close with her sister, what with Darcy always being viewed as the pretty popular Edwards girl while she was the smart Edwards girl, but she had always been there for her older sister even after terrible things happened to her which she never truly understood. She remembered when Darcy had posted pictures of herself online and then that scary man showed up at the house; she prided herself in knowing she had been the one to call the police and rescue her sister from what could have been a horrible situation. She knew Darcy began acting strangely after the night the rest of the family went to the church retreat without her, and following that point she watched her act out at home as well as at school. She knew her sister had done something to injure herself while at school and that she was in counseling after, but never knew nor questioned what exactly had happened because when she did her mother got a pained look on her face and looked like she was going to cry, and her father merely rumpled her hair and pulled her tight in a hug before leaving the room. Darcy seemed to get better that spring after the Easter Break when her parents sent her to some wilderness camp, and then suddenly after the summer she announced she was going to Kenya with a youth missionary group through their church. Months had turned into years with minimal to no communication, at least not with her. It initially pissed her off that she had an older sister who she was never able to reach out to, and who obviously had no interest in her little sister at all. Now she was pretty much numb to this loss and the fact that Darcy was almost never mentioned by anyone including her own parents made it easier to pretend that she had not even existed at all, that she Clare in fact was and always had been an only child.

She wished she could call Alli to at least have someone to talk to about when exactly she had changed, but the fact that she and Alli were not speaking and probably would not be for a long time made that wish impossible. She remembered when she first met Alli one the first day of Grade 9, how Alli changed from home clothes into school clothes and how Alli looked her up and down to decide if she was someone who wouldn't hurt Alli's never ending quest for popularity. She knew she wasn't always the best friend to Alli but that had been more about not being able to always tell Alli what Alli wanted to hear as opposed to what she felt was right in her heart. She always felt that Alli kept her around because while they were both smart, she had never been in competition with Alli with regards to clothes or to boys, and that once Clare started dressing in regular clothes (great clothes in fact, thanks to everything her sister had left behind) she felt Alli viewed her a little less as a close friend and a little more as a competitor in girl world.

But this change in her, this horrible unacceptable change in her had nothing to do with her suddenly not wearing a uniform and wearing her hair down. She was still a much better person then. She had cared deeply about not hurting Connor's feeling when both he and KC had professed their "like" for her, to the point where she even considered not letting herself like KC just to spare Connor's feelings. She really liked KC, he was her first boyfriend and it was all exciting and new. Was it Jenna's intrusion in the whole thing? Did the fact that KC dumped her over a girl who looked like an I-Can-Sing Barbie doll start this change in her? It definitely opened her eyes to how one can go from being liked to being out of the picture in a few short weeks. She felt betrayed by KC, she felt betrayed by Jenna (she was Jenna's friend first after all) and then she felt betrayed again by Alli after Alli suddenly was friends with Jenna again for no apparent reason except that Alli wanted to be on Power Squad. And she certainly still felt concerned for KC's well being after everything had happened with that basketball coach, and even tried to help him when he was doing so badly in math, until he cheated off her exam. He had hurt her badly, maybe more than she allowed herself to admit.

She sat up, ran her fingers through her hair and realized how long it had gotten since the end of the school year. She remembered when she cut it all off right before Grade 10 - her mom almost cried when she came home and showed her - but it had felt so empowering, so right. Perfect for a new school year, and once her parents agreed that she could have the laser eye surgery she begged for all summer, she knew she would be able to show more confidence on the outside to match what she was starting to feel inside. She felt she knew herself better, the breakup with KC had taught her she was strong, stronger than she had ever believed she was, and she just felt great. This was the feeling she missed the most - feeling good about herself, knowing she could take on the world and do right by it, and knowing she had her friends and family behind her as she was behind them.

So much had happened over the past year, she didn't even know where to begin when trying to sort it all out. Her parents fighting, her parents getting divorced, finding out her dad cheated repeatedly on her mom, her mom getting remarried. And Eli. She was almost afraid to think about Eli because she knew she would start crying. She knew she wanted to know this boy better from the moment she saw him. From the moment he ran over her no-longer-needed glasses in that god-awful hearse of his and he commented on her eyes, she knew. She just did. She wasn't sure what it was about him that attracted her - he was definitely good looking but in a way she was not used to feeling attracted to - but it was more than that. He was smart, he was snarky and sarcastic, he was funny, he made fun of her, he infuriated her, and there was no question she fell for him. Fell hard. Things never seemed to go smoothly for them for long periods of time - his dead ex-girlfriend, the fight with Fitz and the disaster of Vegas night, the hoarding, possessiveness, crashing his car as a desperate attempt to keep her in their relationship - the depth of despair she started feeling at that point was so overwhelming, she got up and started pacing around her room. She heard Glen and her mother talking downstairs in loud excited voices about pot and a bag left at the cabin and no matter hard she tried she could not tune them out. She pulled open her bottom drawer, took out the pair of noise- canceling headphones that had been shoved in the back many months ago, put them on, and began crying for real.

How had it come to this point? She really thought even after Eli crashed his car and put himself in the hospital that despite all that had happened, they would get back together. When he returned to school and just didn't seem to care anymore, when he didn't want to talk about anything with her, she just couldn't take it. She knew she had broken up with him, left him in his time of need, yet still at that point could not fathom why he wouldn't want to talk with her about everything that had happened, they had always been able to talk themselves back into a good place in the past. She caught a glimpse of herself in her wall mirror, tears pouring down her face, hair now disheveled, head phones blocking out the world and her sobs. She stopped and took a good at herself, remembering when he gave the headphones to her. She thought of all the plans they had made, about the published story he had written and she had helped edit, the convention she had blown off to go to the dance…and her heart almost stopped. Knowing now what he was going through at that time, his undiagnosed bipolar disorder, how could she not have been there for him? How did she let it get to the point where he felt the only way to hold onto to her was to crash his beloved Morty? Why did she not tell someone what she was feeling, how he had changed, how he was scaring her with his possessiveness and constant need to be with her - his mother, her mother, even Ms. Dawes? Instead she kept it all inside, pulled farther away from him, turned to Alli for advice (who should never ever be asked for any advice at all especially when pertaining to relationships) and then went back into the dance to have fun after leaving him in the hospital? Was this the point where she truly began to lose herself? Her mind was racing.

She thought back to the last semester of school. To the ease with which she forgot about Eli's pain once Jake came into the picture. To the fun she thought she was having with Jake even though she knew it was all fluff. To the need to make Eli jealous, to show him that she was truly okay, even though she was really dying inside. To having no one who understood what she was going through with her parents. She hung her head in shame when she thought of her behavior in the sweat lodge Jake and Eli had built together. When Eli said "he loves you" was he truly talking about Jake, or were those words from his own heart? And to declare her love for Jake in front of Eli, the boy who meant everything to her at one point, and who she deep down knew still cared for her, was just down right cruel. She couldn't even begin to think about what had happened after that, the intense make out session with Eli standing guard outside, without wincing in embarrassment at her behavior. How had she turned into this person who thought about no one'e feelings but her own? How could she change this and recapture herself?

She took a deep breath and envisioned her summer which had all but disappeared. It had been relatively peaceful and should have been plenty of time to reflect over all that had happened. Jake was MIA at the cabin all summer and she hadn't even seen him until the other day right before the wedding. She and Eli, after all they had put each other through, had seemed to end on a peaceful note bonding over Adam's shooting at the prom. Seeing both of them again the other night at the cabin - and her behavior oh her behavior - made her throw herself back on the bed and scream silently into her pillow. Finding Jake with Alli hit her in a way she didn't know she could be hit by either one of them. But when Eli found her in the woods, she truly had never been so happy to see him. She meant what she said to Jake about thinking about kissing Eli - the second part just slipped out from a person she did not want to recognize. And sitting between the two of them on the car ride back, even though she tried to smile and engage them both in conversation, was what started her really wondering who she was and who she had become.

She saw things more clearly than she had in a long long time. She knew who she had been, who she was and who she wanted to become. She was Clare Diana Edwards and she wanted to be able to look at herself in the mirror and be proud of what she saw. She wanted that little girl with the tight pony tail and the parochial school uniform to be proud of her again. It was time. She opened her laptop on her desk and began writing an email. _Dear Darcy, I have a lot to tell you…_


End file.
